World Triathlon statement after the meeting of the Executive Board

WORLD TRIATHLON PRESS RELEASE

With the uncertainty and challenging times that the COVID-19 outbreak is bringing to the whole world, the Executive Board of World Triathlon met again this Thursday to analyse the situation, discuss the future of the events and calendar and work on different scenarios. The Board also created a Financial Group and a Communications Group to analyse the impact of the Coronavirus outbreak and to guarantee that all stakeholders are informed of all measures in the most effective way.

With the World Triathlon calendar and all activities currently suspended until April 30th, and the Olympic and Paralympic Qualification rankings suspended until the end of the current period, the decision of the Board is to maintain the situation the decision of the Board is to maintain the situation, working closely with all the Organising Committees for the rest of the 2020 season, studying each case individually. With the situation changing by the hour in every country, it is at this moment too early to take further decisions, and communication will be done as soon as decisions can be made for each individual events, always putting the health and safety of all athletes, coaches, teams, officials and staff as our foremost priority.

The Executive Board expressed their total support to the IOC and Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee’s joint-decision to postpone the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 until next year, in order to safeguard the health and well-being of participating athletes and everyone involved. World Triathlon also supports the subsequent decision of the International Paralympic Committee to postpone as well the Paralympic Games to 2021.

The World Triathlon Board and staff are now working closely with the local organisers, National Federations, Continental Confederations, IOC, IPC, Tokyo 2020 and all the stakeholders to make all the necessary adjustments to all the events. Regular meetings will take place in the next weeks with all the Continental Confederations to coordinate rescheduling the events.

The thoughts of the World Triathlon family are now with everyone impacted by the virus around the world, and we hope to see you all out there on the blue carpet in the near future. In the meantime, we recommend everyone to follow the WHO and local health authorities’ recommendations, and to stay at home.

About ITU

The International Triathlon Union is the world governing body for the Olympic sport of Triathlon and all related MultiSport disciplines including Duathlon, Aquathlon, Cross Triathlon and Winter Triathlon. ITU was founded in 1989 at the first ITU Congress in Avignon, France. It has maintained its headquarters in Vancouver, Canada since then and also has offices in Lausanne, Switzerland and Madrid, Spain. It now has 172 affiliated National Federations on five continents and is the youngest International Federation in the Olympic Games. Triathlon was awarded Olympic Games status in 1994 and made its Olympic debut in Sydney 2000. Triathlon is also featured in the Asian Games, Pan American Games and Commonwealth Games. Paratriathlon was accepted into the Paralympic Games in 2010 and made its Paralympic debut in Rio 2016. ITU is proudly committed to supporting the development of the sport worldwide through strong relationships with continental and national federations, working with its partners to offer a balanced sport development programme from grassroots to a high-performance level. For more information, visit: www.triathlon.org

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